From the perspective of speed and standards compliance, Safari and Chrome are the winners, Firefox a solid third, and IE8 lags by a lot:

http://www.electronista.com/reviews/browser-tests-chrome-firefox-ie-safari.html

From the standpoint of stability/security, Firefox 3.5.0 was the least polished upgrade, but Mozilla quickly corrected the biggest issues with 3.5.1. I personally experienced sporadic slowdowns and some web sites not fully working with 3.5.0 – but these issues went away after I upgraded to 3.5.1.

I still prefer Firefox at the moment but Google’s Chrome may be the best browser by 2010, because:

* Versions of Chrome will soon be released for Mac and Linux platforms.
* The most popular add-ons and plug-ins for IE8 and Firefox are being developed for Chrome and most will be ready by early 2010.
* Chrome’s architecture gives it stability and security advantages over the other 4 major browsers.
* Chrome is faster.

Safari 4 is a very capable browser that will please many Mac users, especially those who prefer the slick interface. It will likely never be my favorite because Apple does not aim to support flexibility and extensibility to the same extent as Firefox – but it’s a good browser for the majority of Mac users who will never change the default settings.

My most important recommendation continues to be: Use one of the 5 major browsers and keep your browser up to date. Unfortunately, many people are not doing this, as this paper highlights:

http://www.techzoom.net/publications/firefox-update-dynamics/index.en

Computing in the clouds is really just a matter of ‘when’ anyway so I am just waiting to see how I will adapt.

* Wired and cellular broadband access will be much more widespread
* Browsers will be faster
* HTML5 and/or Google Gears will allow most web services to cache data so that documents and other forms of static data can be displayed or edited while offline

Personally, both my home and office have faster broadband than yourself so it’s already there for me. And as I mentioned in the article, I have a Blackberry with T-mobile that can do tethering if I really need to access my data while traveling. It’s slow, but much better than nothing for accessing my various Google services like Gmail, calendar, news, reader, etc. Maybe I’m at the forefront now, but this will likely be standard in 2 or 3 years.

It seems to me that one of the big drawbacks to cloud computing is the as-yet uneven spread of broadband access. I’m writing in the UK. I live within 20 miles of a major city, and yet the best download speed I can get approximates to 1Mbs or less. It’s good enough for most of what I do, but for some things it’s just not adequate. Add to that the lack of broadband access when I’m travelling and in some places I go to, and I’m stuck with files and apps on my laptop.

Like you, I’ve adopted a “mixed economy” with respect to cloud and desktop computing.

Computer access was through dumb terminals prior the 1970s, so everything was on the cloud. From the early 1980s until recently, software functionality and interfaces were far superior on personal computers for most types of applications. But the pendulum is swinging back towards the cloud (or distributed data networks, or whatever you want to call them), as the quality of software available as a web service has greatly increased in recent years, and is now superior to desktop software in certain categories (Gmail versus Outlook, Evernote versus Onenote, etc.) and not even available on the desktop in other categories (search, wikis, blogs, wikipedia, etc.).

So what is different is that for 25 years, using a desktop to get most kinds of work done was the only choice for most individuals, whereas now there is clearly a choice between the desktop and the cloud in many categories of software. A growing percentage of people are choosing the cloud over the desktop, and many expect this trend to accelerate as it is usually simpler and less epensive.

I have not experimented with the Safari plug-ins I mentioned – if anyone has, I would greatly appreciate comments about them. Specifically, does it get rid of all chrome and expand the browser window to the entire screen, like F11 on browsers for Windows systems?

My first attempt to do this in FilterJoe was to ditch the underline and just make a subtle color difference (dark green instead of black). Unfortunately, due to variation in screen contrast/color and peoples’ eyesight, many people were unable to see my links at all. So I added underlines back in.

I wish CSS had a way to do faint underlines for hypertext – but as far as I know it doesn’t. The only way to accomplish faint underlines is to choose a low contrast color for both the underline and AND the hyperlinked words – which unfortunately is also distracting.

I have seen a couple of experimental themes that do away with all links unless you hover the mouse over the section containing the links. To see an example, check out the Boumatic theme, here (click on demo):

http://allancole.com/wordpress/themes/boumatic/

I didn’t do something like this because I thought it was so unusual as to be a distraction in itself – though I like the idea in concept.

The best I have to offer at this point is to choose an overall color scheme for the web site such that link colors are relatively low contrast with the text. That way, they’re not too noticeable, though you can find them if you want. lifehacker is perhaps the best example I’ve seen with link color contrast (yet still findable).

Maybe I just get bored with the same ol’, same ol’ and need a change every once in a while. I do like to try new things, occasionally.

While I like the extensibility of Firefox, I prefer the environment of Safari. It seems more Mac-like to me.

I’ll try out Google Chrome when the Mac version is released and I’ll always upgrade to the latest version of Firefox, so I’m not a Safari-only user; it’s just my preference.

Every once in a while I switch to Firefox but I always come running back to Safari. I would like more flexibility/adaptability with it, but it’s still my favorite browser.

The most dramatic speed difference was loading the Yahoo Home page:

Firefox 3.0.10 6-7 seconds
Safari 4.0 beta 2-5 seconds
Chrome 1.x.x Less than 1 second

Safari may be a speed improvement, but keep in mind that Firefox will get a big speed improvement in June or July when Firefox 3.5 is released. If you are used to the Firefox interface and have a few extensions installed that you like, I think you have more to lose than gain by switching to Safari.

I’ve always been interested in readability and your post(s) has given me some fresh ideas for improving my skill as a blogger / communicator / designer.

I agree with many of your points. And while I’m not professional designer (like you, I do it because it’s part of the communication), here are some of the things that I like in site design …

Readability — post/article divided into easy-to-read sections with good headings; short paragraphs, and posts/articles that aren’t too long. I’d include good writing here as well.

Elegant, Minimalist Design. I like minimalist designs, but I don’t like ugly or boring designs. Even with minimalist designs, they should look good/attractive.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the suggestions. Here are a few for Mac users:
Safari 3.2.1- “Readability” works fine
– must be runing Mac OS 10.4+ to have this version of Safari
– not sure about previous versions
– unfortunately the upper right hand “oval” (hide show top and sidebars) is non-existent in Safari (quite odd b/c Apple introduced this functionality).

Karin thanks for your Mac Firefox suggestion.

Joe,
It would be nice to have more Web 2.0 features in writing the comments such as WYSIWYG editing features so I might be able to indent and create bullet/ordered lists.

1) Unreadable FilterJoe: I forgot to test FilterJoe with Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7). The site looked terrible in IE6 and IE7 (you were using one of these, right?), as these versions of Internet Explorer do not follow all web standards. I have made the needed changes, so FilterJoe displays properly in IE7 and IE8. There are still some idiosyncrasies on IE6 (most notably the weird looking banner and menu action) but I’m giving up on that for now – it’s passable and IE6 is in rapid decline as people migrate to more modern browsers. The site looks fine on the latest versions of the top 5 browsers.

I will be writing an article in the future about browsers but here’s one tidbit now: Upgrade to a modern browser! IE8 is quite good, and so are the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. Older browers (most especially earlier versions of Internet Explorer) are much slower and may have problems displaying web sites created in the last year or two.

2) Comments: I changed the site so that the home page now only displays summaries. The user can click “Read More” to go to the post, at the end of which is the comment box (before, people would read all articles on the home page, and therefore never see the comment box).

Thank you ever so much for your comment – prior to your comment, most Internet Explorer users left FilterJoe less than 20 seconds after visiting for the first time, for good reason. The average visitor stays for at least 5 minutes. In the future, I’ll be careful to view FilterJoe on all 5 major browsers after any change I make.

Thought you’d like to know that at least on my computer, your blog’s name “Filter Joe” and the line of text under it overwrites the title and date of the day’s blog, making both at least partially unreadable.

How about a button for posting a comment? Or did I miss it somewhere? I only found one after reading a comment — a level farther away and therefore less simple.

Reading your article made me wistful for F11 on my Mac. I was just looking around and found something I can do in 2 clicks. The result isn’t quite as good as F11 but seems worthwhile to me.

When I click on a capsule shaped button in the upper right-hand corner of Firefox, the Firefox toolbars disappear. Then I can close the Bookmarks sidebar I keep open. The Mac interface elements are still there, but those 2 clicks eliminate quite a lot of distraction.

I can also bring everything back with 2 clicks–first the capsule, then I click the Bookmarks button I have in the toolbar. I recall that this button was not a default button but something I added.

Also, I just added the Readability button. I was surprised how easy it was. I think I did it less than a minute. I didn’t realize until I started clicking that their “Example” text allows you to preview what your choices will look like.

Off to see how I like using these things…